The manufacture of premium food items increasingly requires greater sophistication in visual presentation of the food items themselves. This may mean that the food items must be consistently presented in a particular arrangement in the food packaging. The precise arrangement of small and delicate materials in food containers has traditionally relied upon intensive manual labor. However, the labor expense and low production rates that attend such manual processes make them prohibitive for all but the most expensive products.
The increasing speed and sophistication of automated robots, and their consequent use in delicate and precise high-speed operations, has opened up opportunities to develop lower cost processes for the precise placement of food items, given that these robots offer rapid and accurate positioning of the food items.
However, there remains a major challenge to devise suitable apparatus for directly engaging these food items, especially where these items have relatively uneven surfaces, such as solid or semi-solid food items, and where it is desired to grasp and relocate a group of such items in order that their original configuration or arrangement is substantially maintained. In particular, where it is desired to transport a group of such items and deposit them in, for example, a precise arrangement, for example a ‘shingle’ arrangement consisting of an overlapping row of relatively flat items, the design of the appropriate engagement apparatus is necessarily a difficult task.
In the field of materials handling, there have been devised myriad different means for engaging and in some way grasping individual items for lifting and moving such items to a different, new location. However, the characteristics of each type of item influence the suitability of each individual engaging means for use with that item.
A traditional engaging means for mechanical lifting devices are suction cups. These work well for engaging materials that have very even and consistent surfaces. However, solid and semi-solid food materials, due to their nature, do not typically have such surfaces. Therefore, suction cups do not tend to be suitable for these applications.
Another well-known means for grasping items is the use of a mechanical grasping device that relies on compression of the item between opposed surfaces. However, the use of compression forces on solid and semi-solid food materials tends to result in damage to the items, and to inconsistent pick-up rates. Therefore, such devices do not meet the need to place single food items, and especially do not lend themselves to relocating groups of food items where the relative position of such items within an array or arrangement must be maintained.
Disclosed in U.S. Pat. Document No. 4,015,872 by Loznak et al (‘Loznak’) is an apparatus for lifting and depositing penetrable materials that relies upon the impalement of the materials by a plurality of ‘spears’, the twisting of the spears to engage the underneath surface of the material in order to allow lifting, and depositing by ‘un-twisting’ the spears to allow the heads of the spears to be withdrawn through the slits created by the initial penetration of the spear. This kind of apparatus does not rely on the surface characteristics of the material, and appears suitable for resilient penetrable materials such as fabric, resin or laminated stock. However, the aspect of slicing or tearing a slit or hole in the material would tend to make this apparatus unsuitable for more delicate food materials such as meat or reconstituted meat pieces. There is also no indication of how a group of materials might be transported in any configuration other than perhaps an aligned stack of objects.
Disclosed in U.S. Pat. Document No. 6,309,001 B1 by John P. Sherwin (‘Sherwin’) is an apparatus that uses a plurality of relatively thin ‘forks’ to grasp and penetrate food materials such as baked goods. This provides a means for grasping materials that tends to result in a lower level of damage to those materials. However, as the disclosed forks are capable of penetrating only individual items, this kind of apparatus is not suitable for relocating groups of items while maintaining their relative position within a group arrangement, and especially not where the arranged group of items that must be deposited is to take the form of a ‘shingle’.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus that enables consistent grasping of food items for their relocation. It is a further object of the invention to provide grasping apparatus that is suitable for picking up individual food items to compile a group thereof and then relocate this group of food items, whilst maintaining their specific arrangement within the group. It is a further object of the invention to provide such apparatus that is suitable for use where it is desired to relocate a group of food items arranged in a shingle configuration. It is a further object of the invention to provide a method of operating said apparatus to compile and relocate such a shingle.